Guest Post: Mellissa Thomas, “In the Navy”

Can you even imagine your first job being in the Navy? That’s Mellissa Thomas’ story. She is a freelance copywriter, copy editor, and blog junkie helping new and growing entertainment business entrepreneurs over at E.i. Geek or blogging about writing at MellifluityInc. When she’s not doing that, she’s promoting her newly released devotional poetry book, From a Babe, now available on Amazon.com and in the Kindle


My First Job: Bumbling Baby Christian Sailor

Photo by GregTimm

I gave myself the oddest high school graduation gift in the form of my first paying jobÉby flying to Illinois for Navy boot camp on November 7, 2001. Now mind you, I had some work experience, but it was a volunteer job as gift store cashier at Plantation General Hospital in Florida.

This decision, however, was radical. I was Abraham, tearing myself away from my family to go to a place I’d never seen before, and immerse myself in a new culture.

However, I admit there was no supernatural conference with God on this one. No nighttime star gazing with amazing promises of propagation. I just belly-flopped into this new life and took it one nail-biting day at a time (literally).

Boot camp was a cyclone.

In hindsight it was benign compared to Army or Marine boot camp, but for an eighteen-year-old Christian girl who’s never had a bona fide job before or ever encountered verbal abuse before, part of me wondered if I made a mistake, especially when they chopped my already shortened hair.

Between the stress of living in a barracks with over eighty chatty girls and getting dropped and screamed on, I was driven to open my Gideon Bible (thank God for those little things) to Psalms 51, frantically praying David’s repentant plea to God between trembling lips as the Windy City winter bit my bones in the middle of the night.

By God’s grace alone, I made it through and graduated in full dress blues glory before my proud family, despite a stealing incident among the girls in my division that nearly held us back.

Then life began.

Thankfully, true Navy life isn’t all boot camp. I was a nervous wreck in logistics A-school, but even that training environment was less jarring.

I learned true Navy life was like any job, just with uniforms, forced physical fitness, and lots of travel. We have office politics too, philandering is still prevalent (shocker), and peers become great friends.


And yes, we drink. Often.

Peer pressure rained bricks on me on my 21st birthday, because until then, my ‘purity’ marveled my friends: no drinking, sex, coffee, or smoking. “How do you live?” they would ask me. “By getting up every day and living my life,” I shrugged.

That night, we went to the base club and they made sure I was the happiest girl there by paying for every pool game, and started me off with a White Russian. If you don’t drink and don’t know what that is, count yourself blessed. It’s a delicious mixed drink that quickens every cell in your throat as it goes down; and my friends kept the drinks coming.

So began my “social life” as a young adult. No matter where I was stationed (Naples, Italy first, then Guam and all of east Asia), I did the typical sailor thing: clubs, alcohol, and cussing. I never lost my faith in Jesus (I was saved at thirteen), but boy did I misrepresent Him during those five years.


As a baby Christian, the Navy was the most extreme indoctrination into the adult life I could have chosen.

I always did my job well, earning 13 different ribbons and medals, but after boot camp, I didn’t seriously open my Bible again until after I was discharged. However, in hindsight, I’m grateful for every awkward experience, and yes, every sin I committed, because it all drew me closer to God while I served the country. As David reflects here, I’m better now because of it all.